By Chuck Hustmyre
(Continued)
'MY MURDEROUS ACTIONS'
Thirty-year-old Katherine Hall was a drug addict who spent a lot of time on the street. Her last known address was a housing project apartment on North Street, a thoroughfare known for pushers, pimps, and prostitutes.
It was somewhere around North Street where Sean Vincent Gillis found her on a cold night in January 1999. She got into his car. Later, he slipped a plastic cable tie around her neck and choked her. He then stabbed her in the throat and through her left eye.
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| Katherine Hall |
Then he raped and mutilated her.
On January 5, a squirrel hunter found Katherine's naked body at a rural spot in the extreme southeastern corner of East Baton Rouge Parish. She was lying face down at the end of a street, dumped in front of a road sign that read "DEAD END."
The symbolism was hard to miss.
In May 1999, Gillis spotted Hardee Schmidt out for an early morning jog. The 52-year-old mother of three was an avid runner and had once competed in the Boston Marathon. For the next three weeks Gillis cruised the neighborhood where he'd first seen Hardee, hoping to find her again.
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| Hardee Schmidt |
On Sunday, May 30, just past 6:30 in the morning, he found her. Hardee had left her home in the affluent south Baton Rouge subdivision of Pollard Estates for a run about an hour before.
Gillis hit her with his car and knocked her into a ditch. He jumped out and looped a heavy-duty cable tie around Hardee's neck and started choking her. Gillis dragged the stunned woman into his car and drove her to a nearby park.
At the park he raped and murdered her. He mutilated her with a knife. When he finished, he stuffed her body into the trunk of his car. Then he went home.
Hardee Schmidt's naked body lay in the trunk of Gillis's car through the night.
The next day, Gillis drove south on Airline Highway toward New Orleans. In St. James Parish, 35 miles from Baton Rouge, he dumped Hardee's body in a small bayou that flowed alongside the highway. A bicyclist found her a day later.
Next Page
Previous Page
Sean Vincent Gillis Letter 1
Sean Vincent Gillis Letter 2
Sean Vincent Gillis Letter 3
Gillis's Strange Antics Fit The "Common Sense" Profile Of A Serial Killer
Sean Vincent Gillis Has Confessed To Killing, Mutilating Eight Women
See Feature Story on Derrick Todd Lee
See Feature Story on Baton Rouge Serial Killer
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